On December 5, we’ll have a new Turner Prize winner. Four artists are shortlisted for the award, which is the biggest prize for contemporary art in the UK. It’s likely they’ll become new household names for the art world – but who is in the running? Here’s our guide to the shortlist. This week, we look at Anthea Hamilton’s work.

Who is she?

Anthea Hamilton’s work is already instantly recognisable - part of her display for the Turner Prize features a large than life sculpture of a bottom, which has made for some nice and cheeky headlines. Born in London, she studied at Leeds Metropolitan University and the Royal College of Art. She is nominated for her exhibition Lichen! Libido! Chastity! which was displayed at the SculptureCenter in New York.

What is her work like?

Hamilton studies subjects closely, using research to explore subjects from art nouveau design to 1970s disco. This provides her lens through which to view the world, but she has also said she is heavily influenced by French writer Antonin Artaud and his desire for ‘physical knowledge of images’. She hopes people will come to her work with a bodily response, taking in the scale and humour.

Anthea Hamilton (Lewis Ronald)

Her Turner display at the Tate is a re-staging of the exhibition she was nominated for, including a suit painted like a brick wall. She also created a mural of the London sky especially for this exhibition.

Curator Linsey Young says that Hamilton spent this summer curating the historic museum collection of Kettles Yard at the Hepworth Wakefield, as well as developing her Turner exhibition. “I think this demonstrates why her work is so vital,” she says. “She connected her interest in the history of art, architecture and design to our lived modern day experience, the past and the present are always colliding.”

It’s worth knowing the full title of the work is Project for a Door (After Gaetano Pesce) - that might be an answer on University Challenge one day. Hamilton created it after being inspired by photo of a model by Italian designer Gaetano Pesce, and was originally going to use it for a doorway to a New York apartment but that plan never came into being.

Courtesy the artist. Photo: Kyle Knodell

What is appealing about her work?

Hamilton’s work is rigorously thought through and developed, but at the same time unapologetically gorgeous and fun, says Young. “Hamilton wants you to have an experience you will remember with her work,” she says. “She has an ability to seamlessly weave together complex references and narratives. In a single work you might find reference to fashion and design history, feminism, scientific research and an episode of The Simpsons!”

What's so exciting about her?

Young says that with Hamilton we never know what is going to happen next. Installing her Turner Prize exhibition involved complex logisitics - “unsurprisingly no one at Tate had ever built a 4.5 x 5m high bottom, but it’s our job to respond to the artist’s needs and find a way to make that happen, drawing on a huge range of expertise from all over the country.”